Ray Charles Robinson was the son of Aretha and Bailey Robinson. When Ray was still a newborn, his family moved from Georgia, where he was born, to a poverty stricken community in Greenville, Florida. In the early years of child development, Ray showed a curiosity for anything mechanical and he often watched the men nearby work on their cars and farm machinery. His curiosity in music wasn’t sparked until one day when he snuck into Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Café. When he came in Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's younger brother, so as to take the burden off of Ray’s mom. However, George drowned in his mom’s laundry tub when he was four years old. After witnessing this horrific tragedy, Ray would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt later on in life.
Ray started to lose his eyesight at the age of five and went completely legally blind at the tender age of seven. Ray Charles’ mom tried hard to teach him how life would be for blind people. She told him to never let his problem become a cripple for him and to never let anyone take advantage of him just because of that. One way she tried to help him was that she told him to use his memory. He couldn’t see so he had to remember how many steps he took or how long it takes to get to one place so he won’t get lost. His mom eventually sent him away so he can get adequate care. She sent him to the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida for 8 long years. This is where he developed his patent musical talent. Ray’s troubles wouldn’t end with becoming completely blind. His father died when he was 10, his mother died five years later when he was 15 while he was in school.
Ray Charles left the Florida School for the Deaf a...
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...ay in 1960. The song served as Ray’s first work with Sid Feller, who arranged and conducted the recording. Ray also won another Grammy for "Hit the Road Jack”. By the end of 1961, Ray had broadened his miniature road ensemble to a full-scale big boy band. This was partly as feedback to increasing royalties and touring fees. He was becoming one of the exiguous black artists to successfully crossover into mainstream pop. His success at this point, however, came to a temporary halt in November of 1961. The search of Ray’s hotel room in Indianapolis, Indiana, during a concert tour after police officers baited Ray into opening the door led to the discovery of heroin in his medicine cabinet. The case was inevitably expelled, as the search lacked a valid warrant by the police which violates the 4th Amendment, and Ray rapidly restituted his focus on music and recording.
First of all, T.Ray is a careless person. For example, he does not take care of his daughter even though it’s somehow a father’s obligation to take care of his children. As mentioned in the novel by the protagonist, “As I fixed T.Ray’s plate, I considered how to bring up the delicate matter of my birthday, something T.Ray had never paid attention to in all the years of my life, but every year, like a dope, I got hopes up thinking this year would be the one’’(21). This tells us how T.Ray does not c...
... Series and banned from baseball forever. Rays father felt his son had the potential to also be in the major leagues, but it was too late as he passed away before he could even play a game of catch with his son. Ray is confused and lost internally because of the loss of his father on such bad terms; this becomes a bigger tragedy than he ever thought. It may have even been a tragedy as big as the death of Joe Jackson who died guilty of throwing the World Series. He was never eased of his pain until after his death which was too late. Tragedies are not uncommon phenomena in life, Ray Kinsella and Shoeless Joe Jackson have the misfortune of living a struggle fulfilled life that only consists of tragic events around every corner of their lives.
America was founded, and has been very successful because of people like Ray, who want to leave their backgrounds or use them to learn from them in order to better their lives in the future; the kind of people that will do anything, whether it is leaving their homeland for a foreign soil in search of a new life and freedom, or tackling the boy with the football. Things have been changed, invented, and made better by people that will not take no for an answer.
[13][14][15] The extended Robinson family established itself on a residential plot containing two small houses at 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena. Robinson's mother worked various odd jobs to support the family. [16] Growing up in relative poverty in an otherwise affluent community, Robinson and his minority friends were excluded from many recreational opportunities. John Muir High School
and the people around him. His mother did not even care enough to keep his birth
Robinson is the youngest of six children of a sharecropping family in Cairo, Georgia. His father would leave the family when Jackie was six months old. He was then raised by his mother, Madella Robinson. Madella moved the family to LA where she saw more opportunities for her children.
Little Stevie Wonder was modeled after the famed career of, the not-so surprising, Ray Charles. Charles was also a blind musician, whose charisma and “R&B screamer” style allowed Gordy to mold Wonder’s image after (Rolling Stone). Wonder worked in 1962 with Motown writer Clarence Paul to produce his first album called The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie Wonder under the Motown subsidiary known as Tamla. On this album, Stevie Wonder elucidated his extreme musical talent on the harmonica, drums, and keyboard. Although he doesn’t sing on this album, the album gave his audience a taste for the Soul and Jazz sound that embodied his young persona. Similarly, later in 1962, Gordy tried to cement Little Stevie Wonder’s image in his tribute to Ray Charles. Wonder made the album A Tribute to Uncle Ray, which was a series of songs dedicated to the famed Ray Charles in both covers and like-sounding originals. However, it was clear that Wonder’s sound was not like that of Charles, which left Gordy in a scramble to create an image that matched Wonder’s talent. As William Ruhlman states in his album
His, "idea of blindness came from the movies", where, "...the blind move slowly and never laughed" (Carver 98). These misconceptions of blindness form barriers between the blind and the sighted. Carver breaks down these barriers as he brings the vastly different lives of these two men together. Those of us with sight find it difficult to identify with the blind. This man, like most of us, can only try to imagine what life is like for Robert.
Jack “Jackie” Roosevelt Robinson was born January 31, 1919 in Cairo Georgia. There he lived with his family in dire poverty on a sharecropper’s farm. Abandoned by his father, at age one, his mother moved their family to Pasadena, California; there she raised Robinson and his four siblings all by herself. Jack became a star athlete in high school excelling in football, basketball, track, and his weakest sport baseball. Jack was not the only athlete in his family. His brother Mack, won a silver medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics for the 200 meter dash finishing second to Jesse Owens. When his brother returned the only job he could get was sweeping the streets. Robinson grew to hate Pasadena, according to Ray Bartlett, a friend he would later meet at UCLA. (Jerome 71) While Mallie, Jack’s mom, struggled to raise her family alone, she instilled the values in Robinson that made him fight not just for himself, but for others. (Berkow A16)
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 (York). He was born in the small town of Cairo, Georgia, on that day in January. His parents were Jerry and Mallie Robinson, the two of them didn’t have the best of marriage but they made out ok (Allen). Later in 1919, Jerry left Mallie to go farm some land somewhere else, but it was later found out that he had run off with another woman.
...ore vocal and strived for equality among all people.” Ray feels these injustices towards women early in her life and continues to fight for them. When she was young she “raved at her [mother] about the injustice of women’s work” (Ray 203). She was raised by her mother to be a girly-girl, but influenced by the land, her brothers, and her dad, and choose to be who she wanted to be.
Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Georgia. On this day, a legend arrived. Jackie was raised by his mother, and his mother alone. His father left before Jackie was born, and he didn’t remember one thing about him. Jackie had many siblings, brothers and sisters. Jackie had an older brother named Matthew, who was also very athletic. Jackie’s mother tried the best she could to raise these boys right, and teach them that no matter what the whites called them...they were special.
When it comes to jazz music, there is one name that everyone knows, whether they’ve never listened to jazz before or if they’ve listened to it their whole lives. That name is Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was one of the pioneers of jazz music, from his humble beginnings in one of New Orleans roughest districts, “the Battlefield”, to playing concerts for sold out crowds in Chicago and New York City, Louis left a massive impact on the way America listened to music for a long time. One of his premier tracks, “West End Blues”, left an impact on jazz music, which other musicians would try to emulate for years.
Stevie Ray Vaughan is a legend and was a leading figure in the blues-rock genre. Vaughan was born in Dallas, Texas in October of 1954. (Dutton) He was exposed to music early on in his childhood watching big bother Jimmie Vaughan play guitar. By the age of 14 Vaughan was playing in Dallas blues clubs. (Simon, 2001) When he played he demanded the audience’s attention and had a sound of blues meets Jimi Hendrix. (Wenner, 2011) His fame was based mainly in central Texas. It was not until he played at a party thrown by Mick Jagger that his band Double Trouble got their big break when David Bowie as Vaughan to perform on his upcoming album Let’s Dance. (Stevie Ray Vaughan, 2013.) He became a pretty big success and his fan base grew to places outside of Texas. In 1985 Stevie became the first white performer to win the W.C. Handy Foundation’s Blues Entertainer of the Year award. (Simon, 2001) After a performance in August of 1990 Vaughan got on a helicopter bound for Chicago that crashed into mountains due to fog just minutes after taking off killing everyone onboard. (“Stevie Ray Vaughan”, 2013.) His legacy still lives on to this day with an ever-growing fan base.
James Brown was born on May 3, 1933, in South Carolina. He lived a life without parental guidance. His mother left him with his father when he was only 4 years old. James was often left alone while his father traveled to turpentine camps selling tar for a living. James recalls the times he spent alone walking around in the woods looking for doodlebugs, and playing a harmonic his father gave him. During this time alone, he never had anyone around to talk to but himself (Brenchley, 2003).